With Hurricane Rita bearing down on Southeast Texas, Kari and Mike Robinson did as told. They grabbed a few valuables, starting with daughter Kaitlyn, and jumped in their two cars for what they figured would be a trip of a few hours to Bryan. The Robinsons lived in a mandatory evacuation area in Baytown and did not feel inspired to defy it. They left in the early hours of Thursday morning, well over a day before Rita's anticipated landfall. In so doing — and much to their surprise — they joined more than a million others in a journey that mixed short tempers and long lines with overflowing bladders and depleted gas tanks. "It took us 16 hours to reach a destination that normally takes us two," Kari Robinson said. "It was really miserable. Would I do it again? Yes." For those who live in low-lying coastal areas, the alternative is simply unacceptable. The surge from a Category 5 storm is not the stuff of macho posturing and hurricane parties. Most of Harris County, however, does not lie in an evacuation zone, which makes the decision to leave or not more problematic for many residents. The Atlantic hurricane season officially begins today and runs through November. Not really prepared Robinson realized her family waited too long and was not really prepared for the stunning exodus that confronted them. But she still was miffed by what she perceived as an official recommendation for everyone to flee, regardless of their proximity to the water. "People in The Woodlands didn't need to leave," she said. "The brunt of the storm was not going to hit them. It seemed like the mayor was worried that we were all going to be in the path of the hurricane. Fear of losing power is not a reason for leaving, in my opinion." Precisely why so many people evacuated was the genesis of a study done by the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center at Texas A&M University. What it found gave credence to the anger of coastal residents who saw their flight path blocked by many people whose leaving was not imperative. Post-Rita surveys showed that approximately 40 percent of Harris County households outside the evacuation zones decided to go, the bulk of them late Wednesday and Thursday (the storm hit Friday night). The resulting traffic snarl, conducted in hot and humid weather, resulted in numerous deaths. A precise total may never be known, but of the 100-plus Rita victims statewide, most did not die in the hurricane itself. "There are some mandatory (evacuation) areas down in the southeast and over towards Baytown," said Michael Lindell, director of the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center. "But that's nowhere near 40 percent of Harris County. Nobody inside of Loop 610 was at risk. Nobody west of I-45 should have been leaving or north of I-10." As it turned out, nobody near Houston was in any danger, as Rita lost a bit of its oomph before landfall and veered east into Jefferson County. But even had it stayed on course, the amount of land the storm would have traversed before reaching most of the city would have depleted it of the sort of energy seen, say, when Hurricane Andrew flattened Homestead, Fla. The simple lesson? If you live in a sturdy dwelling in west or north Houston and take to the highways, you may be helping to create a problem potentially more dangerous than that caused by the storm. Massive evacuations inevitably cause gas shortages and deaths from accidents or physical strain and stress. "People's fear is of wind," Lindell said. "They respond more to the wind threat than the surge threat. But the surge is the killer. Elsewhere it's going to be a very windy day, but it's not going to flatten an ordinary stick-built house. People should not be leaving there." Images of Katrina With images of a drowned New Orleans and battered Gulf Coast still fresh — all courtesy of Hurricane Katrina — people in Houston were understandably skittish about storms. When Rita grew in intensity to a rare Category 5 monster, common sense, if not statistical risk, suggested going elsewhere. But elsewhere turned out to be choked exit routes and trips that people still recall in vivid detail. Those memories, accompanied by a 2006 season that saw few hurricanes and none reaching the Gulf of Mexico, suggest a different perspective the next time around. "My sense is that people are going to make better and more informed decisions (in the future)," said Dennis Storemski, director of the Mayor's Office of Public Safety and Homeland Security, which oversees emergency operations. "Right after Katrina, people were seeing the damage ... and tried to associate Rita with the images they had seen. Everybody learned from the last time." An informed decision, of course, requires good information. With Rita, Lindell and his staff learned, many people do not know whether they live in an evacuation zone, and maps of the evacuation zones were confusing and imprecise. As a result, the Harris County emergency management office has put together a list of ZIP codes that fall within the evacuation zones. Mayor's suggestion Another problem was the suggestion by Houston Mayor Bill White that anyone living in a flood zone near a bayou evacuate. Officials emphasize that surge zones are not synonymous with flood zones, and there may not be a water-related reason to leave just because you live near a bayou. In hindsight, there was plenty of opportunity to reflect that the geography ravaged by Katrina — New Orleans below sea level, Biloxi and Gulfport right on the waterfront — was not like Houston's. But the media dwelled incessantly on the damage potential of the most powerful storm ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico. "We were convinced that our house would be incredibly flooded, and we decided to leave," said Monica Phillips, whose neighborhood south of Brays Bayou flooded during Tropical Storm Allison. Phillips, her husband and daughter spent 22 hours traveling to Kerrville, a trip made worse when she fell asleep at the wheel and ran into the back of his truck, disabling her SUV. "We still stand by the decision of leaving because it was Category 5 for the longest time," Phillips said. "Anything less than a 5, we would stay now." To go? To stay? Texas A&M's Lindell is wary of making predictions, even though it is his specialty as a social scientist. "It's more confusing trying to predict public response than it was three years ago," he said. "Yes, there's Katrina. But there are people who have the memories of Rita traffic jams. A lot of people in the Houston-Galveston area have become disabused of the notion that you can get in the car and go."